O

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!!!

That was pretty cool to write, as well. Kind of lost sight of the fact that I made it up...haven't done that in a long time. That's what She said, on the back of that Vespa, too, right? (and pretty hot, considering nobody took anything off.)

I think this is a bit less inspired than the other stuff. But it has moments.

It was Monday morning at the clinic, and, in addition to the usual full house of weekend warriors and hypochondriacs, the phones were ringing off the hook.

House answered and heard the following "Hi, this is Angela from Mary Hart's office...does Lisa Cuddy work here?"

"Depends on what you mean by work, Angela. My mistress keeps me occupied here. If you know what I mean. And I think you do."

"Really...that's just great. Cause I'm on a tight deadline here, working on a bigger story than this Chase guy anyway, and...hey, aren't you the guy who hung up me before? Only you used that really phony British accent."

"Oh, yes," House replied, accent now firmly in place. "Dreadfully sorry...Deuced unpleasant lack of manners on my part."

"So, does that mean we get access to Dr. Cuddy or not?"

"Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn." he hung up.

A different sort of differential was going on at Casa Gold "Oh, but, Mr. Gold, our computers are down and our monitoring equipment is useless. You can't leave till we monitor your heart rate and make sure you don't have..."
Mrs. Ari paused in thought, a gesture fatal in her soap opera days, but then she wasn't allowed to be photographed in a white lab coat and really tiny underwear and sitting in one of her personally selected leather chairs. "Lupus. Yeah, that's it."

"Is it serious, Doctor?"

"Well, without our machinery, I'm just going to have to take it hands on."

"You don't have to spare my feelings, Doctor, just give it to me straight."

And they were prepared to do things that would surely scuff the finish of the antique desk.

Then, an ominous ringing from his jacket pocket. "It's the bat phone, baby, I have to,"

"No!"

"Just hold that thought, for one second. And don't get up."

"Well, darling, without you on top of me, it's a lot less fun having a blotter practically up my ass."

"Use that anger, baby. You're going to need that later, okay?"

Without looking to see who was calling, Gold picked up. "Eric, I swear to god. If there is not a chalk outline being sketched or a car around a pole right this minute, I'm going to use my connections to reach through this phone and have your larynx ripped out. Are we clear?"

"O-kay. You know, Ari, we go back twenty years. A simple 'This isn't a good time, Lisa' would suffice. Although I'd be interested in reading the monograph on that remote laryngectomy."

"Lisa," he laughed hollowly. "You caught me in the middle of a practical joke on young Mr. Murphy." He paced around the room, closing the door so that his wife wouldn't hear, only to find that she had pulled the long coat around herself again and was sitting on the patio, sulking. Well, crap.

"Sounds hilarious, Ari.," she pointed out. "Have you ever thought you can't stand E. because you're really so much alike?"

"Actually, Lisa," he told her. "I try not to let the little things bother me. Including Eric Murphy. But can we talk about this later? I was in the middle of pleasuring my wife....how did you get this number anyway?"

"You know how, Ari. You and every morning show booker in America knows I'm staying with Vince...you know, you are unbelievable!"

"I get that from women a lot," he couldn't resist adding.

"See, that's what I mean. Whenever I think you're being honest, you start throwing around that phony bravado...it's really obnoxious. But I just wanted to apologize...I never wanted you to find out like this. If it'll make you feel any better, I'm sorry I didn't see what I was missing in school. We were all stupid, then, right?"

"I wasn't,"

"No, you weren't...you were human. What happened?"

"What happened to your Dr. House?"

"Oh, he was a jerk long before he hit the top of his chosen profession. I'm afraid that, you, Ari Gold, have a unique cross to bear as far as the assiness of upward mobility."

Loving this like Dean Winchester loves pie.

I just couldn't resist having Ari not be boasting when he's all "Well, off to make it with the wife,"(although for him that's crazy delicate language of course.) And also, that Cuddy thinks he's full of it and he's actually telling the truth. I believe that Ari was probably a geek in school and most of the boasting about suction and Heidi Klum and all that is highly compensatory. Being an agent is not only his ticket to the cool table, it's his way of deciding who else sits there, too.(But of course, a lot of us here know that to be a geek in high school, you don't really have to look like Urkel, right?) He probably feels that Mrs. Ari would have been out of his league if he'd met her sooner, too. Because he follows her around like she's the prom queen he's got no hope of scoring with. I mean, when he's home. ETA: And, also, Ari, I love you. But your phone etiquette...not so much. Not to mention, I picture the teachers at his daughter's school wearing a cup to Parents' Night. Even the women.

Well, so much for this not being long."If I told you you I had a twenty-two part story, is that something you'd be interested in?"

Vince kind of dug it that Lisa had no real interest in Shauna's publicity campaign and it sent him even more when a reporter asked about Mandy and she smiled and said "Which one is she again?" Because Lisa knew about the human gene project, a little gardening, some poetry, but not a hell of a lot about the crazy business that he and the boys thought about twenty-four-seven, or at least as often as they weren't trying to decide which fictional characters to fuck, what sort of draft pick might bring back the Knicks' glory days, or the name of the place with the great cupcakes.

Lisa read shit without pictures in it. Voluntarily. Without bribery or prompting.

He knew he wasn't, like, a moron. Despite some of the opinions he had taken in with the pasta on his dinner table, he thought he was smart about some things. And he was always very fucking good at pretending things were cool when they weren't, which probably made him the actor he was today. The added bonus of watching his apparent calm drive Ari insane? Only came with time.It was weird though, the more the agent strutted, the more Zen Vince got. Cause it wasn't like screaming, cursing, and even threats against his person were that new in Vince's life. He just went to a place in his brain where it was quiet. At least Ari didn't call him a retard when he didn't rise to the bait, like his father had done. He thought he might have some of that attention-deficit thing they were giving the kids all the pills for, because once he got bored? Forget it. But you couldn't act on fuckin' Ritalin(he figured) and anyway, Turtle would probably sell his whole script on EBay anyways. And, anyway, all that old painful shit was, like, water under the dam.

But when he and Lisa were in bed together they made perfect sense. Among other things he could never tell Shauna was that there was one place where he didn't mind being called "Vincent,"

Not that he talked to the guys the way he used to. Sure, they still knew most everything about his life, but he didn't "bang" or "fuck" Lisa like she was some starlet eager to show off her absence of thong lines. Occasionally, he would talk about their "shagging", but he wished the reference had stayed more Johnny Rotten and less Austin Powers. But if your mother couldn't bust you for saying it, it didn't count as a curse, then, right? Vince's old Catholic-boy love of loopholes reasserted itself, big-time.

And Ari? He was, just like...to use Lisa's word, omnipresent. It never failed that they were in the middle of something when he would call with some detail about Lisa's women's clinic, or some embarrassing story about one of their classmates."It's Ari, again."Vince told her. "Maybe I should take it."

"Let me talk to him...I would like your mouth to be busy for a while."

"Do your patients know how nasty you are...underneath those suits you're just my dirty girl."

"I'm an administrator," She panted as he found a good spot. with his fingers "I don't have patients anymore. Just lawyers, and shareholders, and House."

"Oh, my,"And he stunned her again with that amazing smile. "See, I can play the quote game too...not like you and Ari, but I can. And I can't believe you haven't seen "Almost Famous"...it's a good way to know what I'm about."

"Now, see, in 2000, how was I supposed to know I'd need that? I was snowed under with work, and you were, please God, don't say getting your driver's license, or I'll get out of this bed and kill myself right now..."

"I'm from Queens," Vince told her. "I still don't have a driver's license. Your life is saved. Unless you hate Almost Famous...I can't promise anything then."

"That's great. Just so there's no pressure."

And it might have continued to be stolen time outside of both their lives, if a photographer's innocent mistaken-identity hadn't changed everything.

• **

( continues...) tried to befriend the photographers who started to appear in Head-on's wake, figuring they all had a role to play in selling Vinceness, whatever that was. So far, they seemed like mostly normal guys. Some people complained about being followed, but Vince had been watched by someone since at least puberty...girls. And their fathers, who weren't as impressed as the girls. It was them he thought of when he waved at his "usual" paparazzi. "Hi, Len...hi, George."

It was fuckin' funny that he had to get famous to finally learn how to be what his mother called a "polite young man".

"Where to, Vince?" the older photographer said.

"Just the park."

"Nice to see you taking your mother out...Vince's Mom, how about a smile, huh?" Cuddy said little, but walked back to Vince's motel and locked herself in the bathroom.

"Lisa, this is ridiculous. You don't look like my mother that much.",

If anyone had told Vince Chase that he, rather than, say, Penny Lane, were going to be on his knees outside a hotel bathroom door during this time when he was, well, almost famous, he'd have thought they were crazy or, at the very least, baked.

"Leave me alone," she told him through the door. "I'm old and ugly and I'll leave here when I can get one of those button things"

"I've fallen and I can't get up," Drama quoted. "I was up for that."

"Why?" Vince asked.

"To show that medical emergency could strike at any time, or something. Doesn't matter...I didn't get it anyway."

"Blessing in disguise, Drama." Vince said. "Think how hard that would be to live down if you had gotten it."

"Speaking of living things down," Drama whispered, as they stepped away from the bathroom door, "it appears that your Dr. Lisa has been set upon by body-image demons. Now I'm sure we all know what this is like, but it's new to her because she's a confident civilian who's not often in the public eye. Not like the rest of us who become beset with these issues from time to time."

"Well, okay," Turtle said. "As long as the shit doesn't leave this room, hanging out with Vince can be intimidating like a motherfucker. I mean, you've seen the women he can get. And that includes Dr. Lisa, who has a bangin' body for such a brainiac."

"You never told me that. Turtle, you have nothing to be intimidated by."

"Prove it," E. said, sounding a lot like a manager for somebody standing in a hallway in a Best Western. "Tell us one time you felt insecure about your physical appearance."

Vince straightened up and shrugged. "Look, I appreciate that you're trying to help and everything...it's really decent of you. And I wish I had something to add. But I don't. I'm just not built that way."

"Ok," E. continued. "Show of hands if you hate Vince right now."

Three hands went up. "Et tu, Drama? I'm fucking wounded, man. What about the power of the Chase lineage?"

"Hey, I'm sorry, little bro, but I happen to believe secrets are toxic, and considering the way we grew up, I've been exposed to more than my share. It's in that spirit, then, that I must confess our relationship has certain, tiny but relevant, love-hate moments.And the Chase lineage was far more generous to you, anyway, Vin."

"Do you feel better now?" Vince asked his brother.

"Much, actually," Drama replied.

"Well, then this is all worth it.E, do you really hate me?"

"No, I could never really hate you, Vince. You fuckin' saved my life, you fuckin' mutant. But I do occasionally reserve the right to hate the fact that you graduated high school without so much as a fuckin' pimple and that when you call women the only time you worry they won't want to hear from you is because you blew them off for two years. And if you weren't so fucking lazy, you could probably still keep them all waiting by the phone for their two minutes a day. As much as I love you, I hate that, Vince. You're the only person I know who could get great sex as a result of a throat infection, you lucky son-of-a-bitch."

"Lisa, please come out! Any second now, they are going to go downstairs for torches!"

"What, sonny, my hearing isn't what it used to be...

"Please, stop, you're nothing like my mother...I've only seen you in your bathrobe once."

loves

Thank you, I'm so glad.